Megyn Kelly: Trump is trying to do my job for me — and then claiming credit for my success

Long before Donald Trump came along, Megyn Kelly was a success story, she told to Stephen Colbert on Monday’s “Late Show.”

After the death of her father when she was just 15 years old, Kelly worked her way through law school and got a job as a corporate attorney to pay off her debts. That’s when Kelly says she left law to take a low-paying, entry-level job as a journalist and work her way up to where she is now.

“You know the outside world looks at it and says, ‘Oh, you were on the cover of Vanity Fair.’ It’s like, well, yes, I was. I was in lots of magazines, even on the cover of some before Donald Trump,” Kelly said. While she may have had a “dark year” in 2015 feuding with Trump, “I had the number two show in all of cable news, and then I had an August debate with Donald Trump.”

Trump tried to claim success for Kelly in March when he said, “She’s hotter now than ever before because of me. She should give me at least half of her salary.” But even Colbert called BS.

“I’m glad you said that, because I would hate anyone to think that your success is related to his hostility towards you,” Colbert concluded. “You have all the success you have because of your work and you’d be here because of what you do, not because someone attacked you.”

Promoting her Fox News interview airing Tuesday, Kelly did with the presumptive GOP nominee, she said that the public wanted to see it happen. “It had to happen at some point.” Kelly also hopes that she can use this as a springboard into other interviews with presidential candidates, “except for Hillary Clinton, who refuses to come on.” Though she pitched, “I’m counting on you Hillary, you’re next.”

Kelly explained she attempted to focus it on Trump’s “temperament,” specifically when it comes to his interactions with women, including herself. She brought a clip from the special showing Trump explaining he has never been bullied and certainly doesn’t consider himself a bully, but rather a “counterpuncher.”

“I think he thought coming after me was a counterpunch against me,” Kelly said. “But I would argue that as journalists, we are the counterpunchers. The politicians get up there, make their comments, offer their policies or characters to be assessed by the American people, then it’s our job to punch them a little bit. We’re really the only thing that stands between them and the Oval Office, so we have to ask tough questions, which, in my own view, doesn’t make us fair game for, you know, a year of personal insults.”